SEAS Racing Weekly Update

[Ali Forelli]

Hi all,

We had another productive week! On Sunday, we welcomed Cliff, our newest team member, and we are excited to have him join the team! On Monday, Joe and I met some enthusiastic prefrosh at the Visitas engineering fair. My replacement for next year may be among them...

Seat belt

James made a preliminary design for attachment points and Sam drilled out the last layer of carbon in the seat belt channel. Sam also tidied up the basement room, which is amazing!

Wheel Fairings

On Sunday, Joe designed the wheel fairings in SolidWorks and divided the part into slices. On Monday, Raquel used the laser cutter to cut the airfoil profiles out of 2" foam. Foam-master Sean has been hard at work "persuading" the foam into the correct shape. He has sanded and glued the layers together (with the help of some creative clamps, pictured below). We plan on finishing up the fairings this weekend and next week if anyone wants to help out!

 

Engine

Joe has been putting in a lot of hours at Stan's this week, and he is making good progress on engine parts. Our friends over at NW Labs are still working on the new head, which we hope to have very soon!

Sean, Joe, and Sam spent some time last weekend getting the original engine attached to the chassis (pictured below). With some creative arranging, they were able to get everything to fit with (a tiny bit of) room to spare! Nic helped out with the electric starter, and we now have the engine configured with a push-to-start button. No more yanking the cord to the crankshaft!

Body

On Sunday, Cliff helped me map out the initial cuts for the chassis on the new bottom body pan. On Thursday, Juri made his triumphant return to the Pierce basement and helped me carve out the chassis channels. This morning, Joe and I cut room for the rollbar and clearance holes for all three wheels, and now everything fits! However, we will wait to permanently attach the pan to the chassis until we have all the cables and seat belt attachments finalized.

Windows

After some disappointing results last week, we regrouped to make a plan for windows going forward. Unfortunately, the thermoformer at the GSD is too small for our purposes, but one of the shop managers suggested heating .032" plexiglass with a heat gun and slumping it over the mould. We will also try using the heat gun on the PETG pieces we formed at MIT to see if we can remove any of the wrinkles. Stay tuned for future window experimentation updates.

Meeting this weekend

Due to Yard Fest on Sunday, the meeting time may be shifted, so keep any eye out for an email from me or Joe concerning weekend scheduling. We may also be doing some work tomorrow.

Keep up the good work!

Best,

Ali